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Published: September 22nd 2008
Not obeyed
It says "Don't Urinate". If we could attach a smell to the blog you would also know that it was not obeyedNazca and Lima
In the last days of our vacation we stopped at one place on our way back to Lima, namely the town
Nazca. Nazca is best known for the
Nazca Lines, a vast collection of
geoglyphs that can be seen in the nearby Nazca Desert.
The Nazca Lines are dominated by two different categories of figures.
The first category is large pictures of animals, birds and insects. There is a monkey, a hummingbird, a human and a whale for instance. The largest of these figures are well over 100 meters across.
The second category is large geometrical shapes and long straight lines. Some of these straight lines are 10 kilometres long or more and the geometrical figures are sometimes also several kilometres from one end to the other.
The purpose of the Nazca Lines is not fully known. One theory say that they are part of a gigantic astronomical calendar. Another theory claims that it is a map showing where underground water channels can be found. A third theory says that the pictures have religious significance. That the pictures and the lines are a way for the humans to communicate with the gods. The last
Cow tongue
Gene Simmons, get lost theory makes pretty good sense since the Nazca Lines are by far best observed from an airplane, and the Nazca people didn't have any airplanes.
The Nazca Lines were made between 1400 and 2900 years ago. So even the youngest Nazca Lines predate the Inca culture with at least 400 years.
The best way to see the Nazca Lines is, as we said earlier, from an airplane. We bought tickets to a plane and the pilot took us for a 30 minute long tour of the most famous section of the Nazca Desert. We then saw several animal figures and some of the geometrical figures and straight lines. During the flight the pilot did several sharp turns of the plane. That did not work well with Emma since she is prone to motion sickness. Already a few minutes into the tour she was starting to feel queasy and the second half of the flight she was feeling really bad. So Emma now refers to the geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert as the Nasty Lines.
After we had taken the flight over the Nazca Lines we decided to stay one more day in Nazca because there are a
Nazca Lines Map
Map showing the route we flew over the Nazca Lines few more things around there we wanted to see.
Almost an hour drive south of Nazca is a site called Chauchilla Cemetery. It is a collection of roughly 1000 year old graves. Most of the graves have been plundered and destroyed by grave robbers who roamed around the place from early 20th century until mid 1980-ies. But the grave robbers didn't destroy everything and archaeologists have in their excavations unearthed pottery and mummies among other things. The dry climate has helped to preserve the mummies. Still today many of the mummies have their hair left. An interesting thing is that the hair often is very long and several of the mummies had
dreadlocks. The archaeologists are therefore pretty sure that the people buried in the site mainly were high priests. That is probably a true explanation but a very dull and boring one. We think an explanation that is wrong but fun is better than a true and boring one. So we prefer to think the people buried in Chauchilla Cemetery were all
Bob Marley fans.
After Chauchilla Cemetery we went to a place called Cahuachi. Cahuachi was a Nazca cult place. It is being excavated and at the
Nazca lines
Geometrical shapes and long straight lines moment there isn't much to see there. The place consists of between 30 and 50 pyramids and excavation has been done on one side of the largest of the pyramids and they have just started excavating one of the other pyramids.
When we travelled from Cahuachi back to Nazca we could in the distance see a mountain called Cerro Blanco. Cerro Blanco's claim to fame is that it is the highest sand dune in the World.
The last place we visited this day was the Cantallo Aqueducts in the outskirts of Nazca Town. The climate in Nazca is extremely dry. It pretty much never rains there. That is by the way the main reason why the Nazca Lines can still be seen today, more than 2000 years after they were created. Ever so little rain would have erased the lines a long time ago. So the area around Nazca is all desert. The Nazca culture solved the water shortage by digging canals and in them bring water from distant mountains down in the plains around Nazca. These canals have total length of several hundred kilometres and it truly must have been a project of mammoth proportions to build
Nazca Lines
Geometrical shapes and long straight lines them.
Most of the aqueducts are under ground and consequently can't bee seen. If you want to visit them you therefore have to go to the places where there are openings into the aqueducts. It was at these openings they took water from the underground canals to irrigate their fields. Incredible as it may sound but several of these aqueducts still work, more than 1000 years after they were build, and they are even today being maintained and being used for their original purpose, to irrigate fields around Nazca town.
After Nazca we went back to Lima and made ourselves ready for the flight home. We had half a day to spend in Lima and in these hours we saw two sites.
In the southern end of the district Miraflores in Lima we visited a park called Parque del Amor, or the Park of Love. All along the lower end of this park are long serpentine benches covered with mosaics. These benches bear a striking resemblance to benches that can be found in
Park Güell in Barcelona. We find it hard to believe that this is a coincidence. The artist who made the benches in Parque del Amor
Nazca Lines
Picture of a man must have known of the benches in Park Güell. Instead we prefer to believe the benches in Lima should be seen as homage to the creator of Park Güell, the great genius
Antoni Gaudí.
The last place we visited in Peru was a church near Parque Central in Miraflores District in Lima. We visited this church in the beginning of our vacation and there is a statue inside the church we really wanted to take a photo of. We never got the chance to take this photo last time we were in Lima because the church is often very crowded with worshippers and it felt wrong to disturb them for our photo. But this time we managed to enter the church in between two services and when there were very few people in the church. This statue is of Virgin Mary and we don't think it is a very nice statue. It looks like it is made of plastic and there is a crown with neon lights around the head of the statue and from the hands and down to the base of the statue there are 8 yellow fluorescent tubes. The church and most of the statue are very
Nazca Lines
Picture of a spider dark. The neon lights and the fluorescent tubes are in turn very bright and the combination of the dark statue and the bright lights makes it impossible to take good photos without the aid of a ladder and a professional flash. So all our photos of this statue are unfortunately crap. But we have still added the best of the photos on the blog because we can't withhold this from you.
The best word we can come up with to describe the statue is kitsch. But we found the statue, or rather the fluorescent tubes that goes from the hands, to be absolutely hilarious. These tubes look just like
lightsabers! Somewhat misplaces on a statue of Virgin Mary. We called the statue Obi-Wan Mary.
Finally we'd like to mention that during this trip we became a bit tired of the greasy food. Chicken is popular here and it is good food. We like chicken and since you can find it everywhere and is always cheap we had plenty of chicken. With chicken you always get French fries. With many other dishes you also get French fries. Believe it or not but if you order a sandwich you can
Nazca Lines
Geometrical shapes and long straight lines get French fries. After eating too much French fries over the last four weeks we are very tired of French fries. So for the next six months French fries are banned in our household. We also have a ban on chicken but that will be lifted after only three weeks.
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Bek
non-member comment
wow
That is incredible. I knew they were long but that is amazing!!!!